40 Amazing Cartoon Tutorials for Aspiring Illustrators

If you’re passionate about cartoons and either work as a cartoon illustrator or simply practice drawing cartoons as a hobby, these fun cartoon tutorials will surely help you out!

Cartoon characters and illustrations have a great ability to make people laugh and feel good. Cartoon characters are also used by different companies to create their brand mascot, as they seem to stay in their client’s minds and attract attention. If you are an aspiring illustrator or you just want to improve your Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop skills, then these amazing cartoon tutorials will surely be of help.

If you have some basic sketching skills and talent, these tutorials will seem pretty easy to you. Illustrator is not an easy drawing tool to use, but with a little exercise and determination, you can become a great, talented illustrator.

These tutorials will teach you how you can start from basic shapes and develop them to achieve great results. You can use Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator or Corel DRAW, depending on your preferences.

These fun cartoon tutorials offer step-by-step guidance and are easy to follow. You can create beautiful cartoons from a sketch in no time! You can also create vector illustrations, mascots, or just about anything you imagine.

So, without further ado, here are 20+ amazing cartoon tutorialsfor aspiring illustrators, which will teach you how to create beautiful illustrations and funny characters. We also added an extra one at the end, with some tips and tricks coming directly from us!

This is a two-part tutorial for creating the “Let’s Go To Monster School!” book cover. You’ll learn the complete process from initial sketch to the final artwork, using an Illustrator and Photoshop. In Part 1 you’ll use Illustrator to trace the hand-drawn sketch, lay down the shapes and define the basic colors.

This is an Adobe Illustrator tutorial covering the process of creating your own vector character; Freddy the Fish. It’s a great, step by step tutorial, which will help you learn some basic Illustrator techniques.

For this tutorial, you’ll first create a hand-drawn sketch, which you’ll scan into the computer and use as a base for tracing with Adobe Illustrator. The final outcome is a colourful cartoon character in vector format!

This is a great tutorial that will teach you how to draw a cute tiger cartoon character, that you will be able to use in your projects, as a desktop wallpaper, etc. You will also learn lots of Illustrator techniques as well.

This is a great Adobe Illustrator tutorial, to help you create your very own super cute fuzzy monster character. You’ll be working with the basic shapes to start, then use a variety of gradients to add depth.

This tutorial details the professional workflow for creating vector illustrations and preparing the artwork for stock vector sites. A few time-saving tools and tips are included!

8. Creating Bart Simpson Vector Character in Illustrator

This is a short Illustrator beginner tutorial, in which you will use Layers, utilize the Pen Tool, Convert Anchor Point Tool, and Direct Selection Tool, to draw and colorize a vector Bart Simpson character.

In this easy tutorial, you’ll find out how you can create a cute panda bear face icon all from ellipses. The great thing about this tutorial is that you can easily apply the techniques to other icons, illustrations, logos, or other projects.

This tutorial will help you create the face of a goofy bunny. You won’t need the Pen Tool, only the Ellipse Tool and the Rectangle Tool plus some basic effects like the Inner Glow, the Drop Shadow or the Warp effect.

Follow this step by step process to design a cute vector reindeer character. You’ll begin by creating the basic structure of the character with basic shapes, then build up the details with gradients and effects.

This tutorial will guide you from sketchbook to vector art and you will create a “Fat Cat” doodled with biro and translated into a neat vector caricature. Intermediate knowledge of Adobe Illustrator is recommended.

Using Adobe Illustrator and this step-by-step tutorial you can make this fun cartoon. It can be used to easily create mascots.

Creating Cartoon Effects in Photoshop

Learn how to create cartoon effects in Photoshop using this simple, step by step Photoshop tutorial for beginners. Start learning!

Ideally, your target will be set against a clear background for easy manipulation.

Step 1 – Open up your chosen picture in Photoshop. Select the pen tool (see left of picture), and select ‘Paths’ mode (see the top of picture). Preset your brush to a basic 3-pixel width ‘Hard Round’ (see the second picture), as you will need to use this for your stroking. Create a new layer (Ctrl + Shift + N) – name this layer ‘Lines’.

Step 2 – Carefully start to trace the outline of your picture with the pen tool – use the anchor points to manipulate then pen selection to fit the target, you can do this in sections if it is not a complete loop. Remember that you don’t have to follow the outline to the finest detail as you are trying to simplify the image into cartoon form, so nice round edges work well.

Step 3 – Once you finish each section of tracing, right-click on the pen selection and choose ‘Stroke Path’. Select ‘Brush’ from the drop-down menu and click OK. Your first section should now be stroked. Your primary colour defines what colour the edges will become.

Step 4 – Now carry on with this until you have covered the edges and defining lines of your picture.

Step 5 – Now create a new layer and name it ‘Fill’. Set the opacity of this layer to 50%, so you can see the image you are tracing behind. Remember to keep checking back to 100% fill to ensure the colours you are selecting are appropriate for your image, as 50% opacity will dull your colours. Now it is down to you to decide which colours are most appropriate for different sections of your image. Remember to select darker colours for shaded areas as shading is vital to this cartoon style.

Step 6 – Increase the brush size, and vary it depending on the area you are filling in. Make the ends of the filling fit under the previously drawn edges. Fill the areas with the colours that dominate that area of the original image, or whatever seems most appropriate.

Step 7 (Optional) – There are a few effects that can be added to make an image appear more cartoon-like. Check the scan lines tutorial for more information.